Not that duke, p.24
Not That Duke, page 24
“How is it kind to treat you like a green gourd?”
“Kindness is allowing me to wear spectacles though my aunt abhors them. Respecting my decision not to paint my face. Not complaining too much when I break things because of my imperfect vision.”
“Hmm.”
“Allowing Specs to stay in my bedchamber even though my aunt dislikes animals. Though not, it turns out, kittens.”
“That’s not kindness. That’s sufferance.”
“I wouldn’t have been their choice, their first choice,” Stella said.
The words hung in the air between them. She hadn’t been his first choice, either, and they both knew it.
Banishing the thought, Silvester tipped up Stella’s face and caught her mouth in a kiss. He tried to say with the stroke of his tongue what he didn’t seem to be able to articulate: what he felt for Yasmin was nothing like the driving, raw desire he felt for Stella.
Yasmin had been his first choice.
But a first choice is not always the right choice. The day would come when Mrs. Thyme understood how lucky she was to have a niece who loved her enough to understand her terror and tolerate her hysterics.
Silvester didn’t express the thought, though, because he had Stella’s luscious, curved body in his arms. He wanted to make love to her more than he had wanted anything in his life. Desire slammed into his mind as he tried to communicate the wild craving that was ravaging his body.
“All right,” she gasped, a while later.
Silvester lifted his head, feeling dazed.
“You may unclothe me.”
He stared at her mouth, hearing the words but making no sense of them.
“Time to deflower a virgin,” she clarified.
Silvester stood up, placing her on her feet. “Right.”
She poked him in the chest. “Not that you’ll be using the skill hereafter, Duke.”
He shook his head. “We took vows. Yours. Till death do us part.” Lust seemed to have diminished his coherence.
Stella nodded and then turned around. “Buttons first . . .”
For the rest of his life, Silvester never forgot the experience of desiring his new wife so desperately that his hands shook as he removed garment, after garment, after garment. “I hate women’s clothing,” he muttered, when he finally began unlacing her stays.
At last, Stella stood before him wearing nothing more than a translucent chemise. Plump nipples stood against the delicate fabric. Freckles spread like a splattering of gilt down her neck, over the curve of her breast, disappearing behind the lace that edged her chemise.
“As I told you, they’re everywhere,” she said, apparently following his eyes. She stuck out one elegant foot, which had its own collection of freckles.
Silvester swallowed hard. He wanted to sip her like a fine whiskey. His mouth actually tingled, thinking of licking her from her ankle up.
“Your clothing?” his wife asked, cocking her head, pulling his mind back from madness to near sobriety.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Never having been unclothed before anyone but a maid or a modiste, Stella felt wretchedly awkward. She was trying to appear calm, but inside, her stomach was in knots.
Her chemise had been designed to be worn under her wedding dress. It was fashioned of transparent cotton, in the same pale pink color, with a low neck and a gold ribbon threaded just under her bosom. If she had had slim hips, the fabric would have drifted to her ankles.
But as it was, the swell of Stella’s hips pulled the cloth tight in that area. Supervising her dressing that morning, her aunt had moaned, asking whether Stella had eaten excessively since she was first measured, a question to which Stella had no answer.
Silvester didn’t seem to mind. His gaze devoured her from head to foot, but kept pausing and returning to the shadow of red hair visible under the taut fabric.
As if he could read her mind, he said hoarsely, “That chemise is a marvel.”
Happiness sparked in Stella’s chest. “Truly?” She smoothed her hands over her hips, pulling the fabric down so it didn’t bunch. “It is somewhat ill-fitting.”
A ragged groan tore from Silvester’s lips. “It’s perfect. I’ve been dreaming about your curves, but the reality is more lush than I imagined. Please, wear only that garment for the next week.”
A surprised laugh sparked from Stella’s chest. “Don’t be absurd!”
“We’ll banish your maid to the Dower House when she isn’t needed. Just think of all the washing that won’t be required, because you’ll wear your chemise and only your chemise.” His hands were curled at his side, as if he didn’t trust himself to touch her.
Stella blinked at him. Mrs. Thyme had taught her that maids were needed every moment, in every circumstance.
“Remember, I plan to debauch you in every room,” Silvester stated, as if his sentence was entirely reasonable. Meeting his hungry eyes made heat bloom between her thighs.
She cleared her throat. “Perhaps you might unclothe now?”
With a rough sound of acquiescence, Silvester shed his bridal garments, tearing off his heavy coat, the embroidered waistcoat and breeches. Curiosity and desire battled for precedence; Stella had to stiffen her knees so that she didn’t sink onto the bed as her instincts suggested she should.
He was beautiful. That was a given.
But when the body he had described as brutal emerged from starched linen?
A wild craving surged through her at its clean lines, the strength signaled in every lineament, from his flexing back muscles to his Roman nose.
“May I ask whether you own a toy such as that celebrated by Nashe’s lover?” Silvester asked. His voice was rough and throaty, his eyes fixed on hers as he pulled down his smalls and threw them away. His staff bobbed against his stomach.
Stella nodded. She couldn’t make herself speak. It wasn’t that the illustrations in the book were inaccurate . . . No, they were inaccurate. Undersized.
She cleared her throat. “Nashe’s lover calls it her ‘little dildo.’ I presume mine is the same size. It might not be lifelike.”
He looked down, as did she. His thick, heavy length was straining toward her. Heat pooled in her body as their eyes met.
Silvester surged toward her and pinned her to the bed, all that delicious male weight holding her down. Stella wasn’t entirely sure where to place her hands.
On his shoulders? That was safe. Those long muscles that she’d glimpsed when he turned to throw his breeches on a chair: Could she caress those? His arse?
“I need to know the rules,” she gasped.
“There are no rules,” Silvester said instantly.
So she wrapped her arms and legs around him, pulling her chemise tightly between their bodies. He rocked against her, and a desperate whimper broke from her throat.
Silvester drew back, taking his weight away from her. He put his hands on the hem of her chemise, meeting her eyes with a silent question. When she nodded, he slowly pulled it upward, revealing first her legs, then her hips, her waist. She sat up and allowed him to pull it over her head.
He looked at her for long minutes until she could feel herself turning red.
His eyes gleamed hungry, even desperate. “I want you,” he murmured. “Exactly as you are, every curve, every freckle—everything.”
Stella had already realized that. Her embarrassment wasn’t about him; it was about her. Sensation was searing through her in an entirely unladylike fashion. Her limbs were trembling, and she could feel unladylike heat pooling in her body.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t experienced desire; she had. But desire in the presence of another person? Moreover, the very man whom she used to imagine making love to her, and now he was here in the flesh?
It was embarrassing. She could pretend to be unmoved so that he wouldn’t guess. But was that the right thing to do?
Stella was trying to stop herself from gracelessly panting with desire. Trying to stop herself from speaking so she didn’t start pleading with him to lie on top of her again.
Silvester’s hands hovered over her breasts. His gaze asked a question that Stella answered by arching toward him. As callused hands palmed her nipples, she sucked in a breath.
He lavished attention on her breasts, his tongue painting a streak of fire that left her breathless, lapping her nipple until she started shaking, sweat prickling her neck.
When a moan broke from her throat, he gave her a wicked grin and then slid farther down, tracing freckles on the curve of her belly before he rubbed his cheek against her private hair and licked. His warm, wet tongue made her feel slippery and soft, as if stars were streaking through her veins. Like drinking starry wine, intoxicating wine.
With a sigh, Stella gave in. She pushed away the idea that Yasmin would have been more ladylike, the fact that Yasmin’s stomach wouldn’t have formed rolls.
Silvester was hers now. She peered down at the gorgeous, muscled male body that lay sprawled between her legs. Naïve or no, she could read the rigid tension in his shoulders, going down to the curve of his back that rose into a muscled arse. He was here with her, and she’d be a fool to discount that.
He did something with his thumbs that made her squeak. Her head fell back as she let herself simply feel how swollen and sleek she was under the rasp of his tongue.
“No rules for this,” he murmured, raising his head a few moments later.
Stella’s hands were entwined in his hair, just in case he tried to move. “I have a rule: don’t stop.”
He laughed, reached up, and pinched one of her nipples.
She gasped, and sensual fire washed over her again and again, smashing through her idea of what desire was like. Even of what orgasms were like, because those she gave herself with her dildo were in a different category.
A different universe.
The heat subsided, and then Silvester did something with the thick fingers he’d thrust inside her, and she spilled into fire again, panting, gasping, crying out, her hands pulling his hair.
Finally she subsided with a muttered curse.
Silvester reared back, his hands moving to grip her thighs. Stella peered at him through her lashes. His smile was devilish, satisfied.
“Bullfrog,” she muttered, surprised by the hoarseness of her own voice.
“I own that,” he said promptly. “I’ll croak proudly about giving my wife pleasure.”
Her eyes flew open. “Silvester!”
“No, I won’t,” he said. “But here, in this bedchamber, between us? Damn right, I am proud.”
“Humph,” Stella said, relaxing into a warm puddle of satisfied woman again. “I suppose I’ll allow your superior smirk under the circumstances.”
He crawled over her on his hands and knees, dropped his head, and devoured her mouth. At first Stella felt too melted to engage, but then he lowered his body slowly onto hers, and everything in her woke up again, her skin tingling.
“Am I too heavy for you?” Silvester murmured, his voice gravel in her ear.
“No,” she said honestly. She wasn’t grasshopper delicate. Her body relaxed under his weight, and she felt lush and perfect, rather than awkward and heavy. This close, she didn’t need glasses to read his face.
“I like your face,” she muttered, palming it.
“I like everything about you,” he said throatily.
“Especially your ducal nose.” She kissed it.
His expression was hard to read. “Ducal nose, eh?”
“Yes, Beaky,” Stella said cheerfully. “I got that right, didn’t I? Or was it Duckbill?”
He shook his head.
“Did the nickname bother you?” Stella said, realizing suddenly that she might have raised a painful subject.
He scoffed. “If we must stay with waterfowl, I’d rather you didn’t call me a lame duck.”
She frowned.
“As was poor Thomas Nashe.”
Stella shifted teasingly, letting one thigh rub against his erection. “As you assured me, that doesn’t seem to be a problem you share.”
Silvester shuddered and then pulled back, one hand pushing her legs farther apart. The thick, round head of his shaft eased forward, sliding over her sleek folds before easing into her body, bringing with it a pleasure so keen that she gasped.
She tilted her hips, her fingers curling into the muscle of his shoulder. Silvester was sweaty, his chest heaving. She pulled at him. “Come closer.”
Silvester’s jaw was clenched. “Have to go slowly. Virgin.”
“Dildo,” she hissed, and yanked at him again.
Her husband barked with laughter, and braced himself against the bed, pulling her underneath him. Stella arched up with a shriek as Silvester surged forward, his hard warmth coming to a space that seemed to have been made for him.
Her legs curled around his hips as he rocked forward. Rumpled locks of hair fell over his forehead as he whispered, “Is it painful?”
“No,” Stella said flatly.
His eyes flared with raw desire.
She bumped up, inelegantly but urgently.
He kissed her with a scorching promise, holding both their bodies still, his weight pinning her to the bed, and then he began moving, pulling back and thrusting, burying himself inside her again and again. Feeling pulsed through her, as ferocious as the thrusts of his body.
“It doesn’t hurt?” Silvester rasped sometime later.
Stella was clinging to his muscled forearms, pressure building in her slowly as she chased a spark that threatened to become an inferno. She’d never felt anything like this when she played with her dildo, making up stories in which a duke kissed her on the dance floor.
“God, no,” Stella cried. She arched against him. “It’s not quite enough, if that makes sense.”
A bark of laughter broke from his throat.
“Are you supposed to be merry at this moment?” Stella asked, blinking at him.
“Never have been, with another woman,” Silvester told her. He adjusted, clamped a large, callused hand on her right hip and pulled her body toward him, just as he thrust forward.
The sound burst from Stella’s chest without volition: a raw, scorched cry.
“There,” he said, his own voice thicker and dark, not laughing.
“Again,” she breathed.
“Like this?”
“Harder.”
“Goddamn, I was so lucky to marry you,” Silvester whispered.
He began thrusting so hard that the bed slammed against the wall. Thankfully, he didn’t stop, just kept driving forward again and again, his eyes searching hers except when he pulled her into a scorching kiss, never losing his rhythm.
Before Stella knew it, she was careening toward another climax, this one threatening to be so powerful that she felt a little afraid and clung tighter to him. Which made him slow down and whisper ragged words in her ear.
She didn’t listen to them, but they sank into her anyway, a blessed flow of language broken by hoarse gulps of air. Always his hips kept up that even rhythm until she bit his lower lip. “Harder!”
That did it.
Silvester lost control, his face contorting, jaws clenched. There was nothing civilized about his face now. Sweaty with a red streak on each cheek, his eyes glittering through lowered lids, an instinctive grunt slipping from his lips every time he flexed his hips.
Stella looked at him, saw the pirate, saw the Roman warrior, saw the man she married and loved, and abruptly felt fire sweep through her. She clenched on him inwardly, a cry exploding from her lips.
Silvester groaned and ground his pelvis down on hers, shuddering, his hips jerking inelegantly over and over as he spasmed, spilling himself inside her.
And collapsing.
He caught himself on his elbows, his sweaty forehead touching hers. He looked as if there was no civilization in him. Sure enough, when he opened his mouth, a guttural sound came out.
Stella giggled.
Silvester shook his head. “You.”
She waited, but he let his head fall to the sheet. True, he had worked hard. A sheen of sweat spread over his back and his arse. She picked up the corner of the sheet and dried him off.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
“I like it,” she whispered. “I love the way you smell. Sweaty. Real. Not scented. Not that I don’t like your soap, because I do.”
“Chatty.” He was clearly reduced to single words.
Stella did feel chatty. Happiness had burst inside her and was still drenching her with joy. She loved it when her articulate chatty husband was reduced to words like “virgin.”
Not that she was a virgin any longer.
“We can make this marriage work,” she whispered.
Silvester eased backward, away from her, and then reached for the linen cloths hanging against the wall. “Damn right.” He returned to the bed. “Spread your legs, wench.”
“Wench? Is this what I should expect of the duke I married?” Stella cried, unable to stop giggling. But she spread her legs.
He patted her dry. “No blood.”
“Dildo!” she reminded him, giggling even harder. “Honestly, I wasn’t sure we could make it work. Because, well, because you had that Yasmin problem, and we don’t match, do we, and if I don’t have my glasses on, how am I to see what’s happening in your eyes?”
“What are you talking about?” Silvester said, pausing in his patting to frown at her.
“The pirate you,” Stella explained. “You play the placid, amiable duke very well, but the haughty, real duke is always there in your eyes. I thought I had to have my glasses to see, but I hadn’t been thinking about how close we can be, as married people.”
She slid backward and sat up. “Like this.” She reached out and cupped his face, bringing her own as close as she could without their noses bumping. “No charming duke to be seen,” she whispered.
“Half the time I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Silvester said. “Is that a problem?”
“Your mother suggested I could find a man with a better vocabulary,” Stella said, smiling so hard that her cheeks hurt.
